The end is near for Neely Spence, but so, too, is the beginning of what could be another exciting chapter of the heralded NCAA Division II star’s running career.

On Saturday in Lock Haven, Pa., Spence will lead her Shippensburg University team into the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference cross country meet for the fourth and final time, kicking off the stretch run of her final collegiate season. She and the Raiders are both three-time defending champions, and, with a good race, fourth straight individual and team titles could be in the works.

Early the next morning Spence will hop on a plane bound for Guadalajara, Mexico, where she’ll get a taste of what might lie ahead when she lines up on the track for Team USA in the 5,000m run at the Pan American Games on Oct. 27. [Editor's note: Spence placed eighth in the Pan Am Games 5,000m race.]

After that, she’ll return for the Nov. 5 NCAA regional meet in Slippery Rock, Pa., followed by the final DII national cross country championships of her career on Nov. 19 in Spokane, Wash.

“I’m really savoring these last few cross country meets,” says Spence, who is nonetheless excited about competing in the Pan Am Games, even though she’s not as speed-sharpened as she might be if she was in track season. “I love running cross country and it’s hard for me to believe my college career is almost over.”

Shippensburg was fourth at nationals last year and, with teammates Katie Spratford, Jamie McCollum, Emma Shank, Sarah Strayer and Patty Reis also running well this fall, there's hope the Raiders, currently ranked No. 9, can finish in the top five again. While there are plenty of good runners at the DII level, Spence is the heavy favorite to win her second consecutive individual title. She ran away with the title last year by more than 15 seconds and appears to be even more fit this fall.

Spence has won two of her three races, taking the individual title at Shippensburg’s low-key alumni meet and then winning the DII Challenge on Sept. 17 in Kutztown, Pa. She also finished second (behind Villanova’s Bogdana Mimic) at the Paul Short Invitational on Sept. 30, a meet that included several of this year’s top Division I runners.

“I went back and reviewed all my training logs from college, and each year there had been a steady progression with my times getting faster, the recovery getting shorter, and the workouts getting longer,” says Spence, who on many occasions this fall has been doing workouts with runners on the Shippensburg men’s team. “This is exciting, and exactly what I wanted out of my collegiate career.”

Spence’s gradual progression has been part of the master plan of her coach and father, Steve Spence, who, of course, was an accomplished runner in his day. Believe it or not, Neely seriously considered going to school elsewhere, giving the University of Colorado, among others, a long look before ultimately deciding to stay local and go to Shippensburg. But it wasn’t her father’s running history or his vast knowledge of training she would have missed the most, she says, but his shared vision of her goals.

“I trusted my dad’s training and I felt like he knew me even better than I knew myself as a runner,” she says. “I felt that he ultimately could make me the best runner I could be. He knew my goals and he knew how to get me there.”
The elder Spence, the bronze medalist in the marathon at the 1991 world championships and the 12th-place finisher in the 1992 Olympics, has long believed his daughter could excel at the 10,000m and perhaps the marathon, but he’s made it a point to bring her along slowly. She has yet to run a 10K and only this year has surpassed 70 miles a week in training.

While his daughter had loads of talent in the form of a big aerobic engine, the elder Spence knew he had to improve her form — and, as a result, her strength — if she was going to maximize her potential as a distance runner. Early on, they found she wasn’t even strong enough to do a lot form drills with consistency, so in January she started working with a strength coach to add a bit more muscle mass on her otherwise lean frame. The ultimate goal of the plyometrics, weight workouts and other exercises is to improve her form, durability, efficiency and speed.

“I’ve been doing a mini body builder strength program,” Neely says. “What we’re trying to do is make it so I can close a race fast, even off of a fast pace. It’s so I can call on those fast-twitch muscles that I’ve seemed to have lost along the way or maybe never even had.”

Ultimately, Neely’s final year in college is leading up to next summer’s U.S. Olympic track trials. Neither Steve or Neely figured 2012 would present a viable opportunity for her to compete for a possible Olympic berth — and they’re still realistic about her chances — but she progressed faster than either expected last spring.

She lowered her 5,000m PR from 16:13 to an NCAA DII-record 15:33.83 before winning her third straight NCAA title in that event in June. She ran even faster at the U.S. track and field championships later that month in Eugene, finishing seventh in 15:27.72 against some of America’s top runners.

“She obviously gets better as the distance gets longer,” says Steve, who’s in his 14th year as Shippensburg’s head cross country coach. “Similar to me, she has decent speed, but when it comes down to closing speed at 5K, it might not be there for her. But 10K would be more aerobic and a much better distance for her.”

For the second consecutive year, Neely spent most of her summer in Boulder, Colo., just as Steve did during part of his pro career. But because her season extended into late June, she and her dad figured it would be best to take two full weeks off and then ease back into training. Running only a couple of days a week, she didn’t log many miles at high altitude, but she did take time to meet with Sara Slattery, Jenny Simpson and other current and former elite runners to prepare her for what lies ahead after college.

"I remember being young and people asking what I was going to be when I grow up, and I would say, 'a runner.' They'd say, 'that's not a job' but i knew it was because that's what my dad did," she says. "And this year, it could become a reality for me."

Steve Spence, who won two NCAA individual track titles when he ran for Shippensburg in the mid-1980s, has been tickled at his daughter's progression. He served as Neely's primary coach when she ran for Shippensburg Area Senior High School, guiding her to several state championships and the 2-mile title at the 2008 Nike Outdoor Nationals.

“It’s been very gratifying to see her following in my footsteps to some extent, but at the same time far surpassing anything I ever did in college," he says. "I thought I had a pretty good college career, but after she finished her first year she had already surpassed everything that I had done.

"It probably could have worked somewhere else just as well or maybe even better. We’re just happy that what we’ve chosen to do and what she chose to do has worked for her."

Neely loves being coached by her father, but she admits it can create some tenuous situations. For example, she says, there were three straight workouts on the track last spring where she wound up in tears.

“It was the father-daughter relationship thing. With anyone else, I would have been frustrated, but with him, I had the emotions attached to it, too,” says Neely, whose mother, Kirsten Harteis, was also an accomplished runner. “He’s definitely harder on me than he would be on other athletes. On the fourth workout, his goal was to have me not cry, and we did it, and he was so excited.”

Spence is by no means the only good runner at the Division II level. Western State’s Lauren Kleppin, third last year at the NCAA meet, is fit and racing well this fall, having won the 6K race at the Oct. 1 Cowboy Jamboree. Grand Valley State’s Monica Kinney has really come on this fall, as has Alaska-Anchorage’s Ruth Keino. But none of them have a 5,000m track PR anywhere close to Spence’s, nor the expert guidance from a former world-class runner.

By next summer, the father-daughter coaching set-up could change if Neely joins a post-collegiate training group as a professional runner. But that’s still a long way off, and for now, she’s savoring every moment of it.

“It wouldn’t work for everyone, but it works really well for us, and I wouldn’t want it any other way,” she says. “It’s been awesome. Having his knowledge is very beneficial to me. My full and complete trust in him is something I wouldn’t have with anyone else.”